In April, the Trump Administration fired the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) team tasked with monitoring and preventing drownings, just as deaths–especially among children ages 1 to 4–are on the rise.
The team collaborated with organizations such as the Young Men’s Christian Association YMCA and the Red Cross, which provide help to youth and communities to offer free swimming lessons, and collected essential data to identify risk factors and implement preventive strategies. Now, without that support, experts in the field fear crucial drowning mortality trends may go unnoticed.
Amy Hill, a member of the Chicago Water Safety Task Force, highlighted the impact of a recent CDC study, “After the report was released, we were inundated with calls from the media. The data shocked many people, who wanted to understand what was going on. When the CDC publishes something like this, people listen.”
The report in question, released last May, showed that drowning is one of the top three causes of death from unintentional injury between the ages of 5 and 34. It also revealed sharp ethnic disparities in death rates, with particularly high numbers among Native Americans, Alaska Natives and people of color.
Although U.S. states continue to receive millions of dollars in funding from the CDC for water safety initiatives, agency leaders are warning staff to prepare for possible further cuts.
“We are taking away critical resources and tools to protect our children. It’s really alarming,” said Sharon Gilmartin, executive director of the Safe States Alliance, a nonprofit association of professionals committed to injury and violence prevention.
